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Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies

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Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Wage arrears

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Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter Jul 2006

Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We analyze a model of wage delay in which strategic complementarity arises because each employer's costs of violating its contracts decrease with the arrears in its labor market. The model is estimated on panel data for workers and firms in Russia, facilitating identification through fixed effects for employees, employers, and local labor markets, and instrumental variables based on policy interventions. The estimated reaction function displays strongly positive neighborhood effects, and the estimated feedback loops - worker quits, effort, strikes, and legal penalties - imply that costs of wage delays are attenuated by neighborhood arrears. We also study a nonlinear case …


Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter Dec 2003

Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

What role do community norms play in the diffusion and persistence of new organizational practices? We explore this question through an examination of the widespread practice of wage arrears, the late and non-payment of wages, in Russia during the 1990s. Existing research on wage arrears most often examines this practice as a means of flexible wage adjustment under difficult economic conditions. We develop an alternative theory that explains wage arrears through their acceptance as a legitimate form of organizational behavior within local communities. Our empirical analysis finds some support for the neoclassical position that wage arrears reflect adjustment to negative …


How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter Mar 2002

How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to show substantial interfirm variation with the probability of arrears positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Estimation of a constrained multinomial logit model also reveals intrafirm, variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Workers tend to have higher arrears in rural …